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 rocking chair. Annie began to whimper and, putting her little hand over her stomach, said that she had a pain there. She gave the child a drink of water to help dissolve the colored candy she had eaten, then took her up and rocked her, crooning a song. The boys who had been wrangling all afternoon and constantly appealing to her to settle their differences, now fell to fighting, rolling over and over on the littered floor. She got up and slapped them both smartly.

"Naow, then," she said, administering a last cuff to Billy, "you'd otta think shame to yerse'ves, the way you been a-actin'. You jes set right to work the both of you an' pick up all them things an' put 'em in the box, an' don't let me hear nary word out'n you."

They subsided from loud wails to whimpers, then set to work sullenly picking up the toys and throwing them noisily at the wooden grocery box in which she had tried to train them to keep their things. When they thought their mother was not looking, they angrily nudged and pinched each other. Then, forgetting enmity, they began to make a glorious game of it and threw the playthings in all directions, trying to hit anything but the inside of the box. She tried to tell herself that they were only children having childish fun; but to her irritable nerves they seemed like little fiends. She felt a wild impulse to turn her back on everything, even the sick baby, and flee away along the roads, into the woods, anywhere where there was quiet and peace.

She put up with the turmoil for a while, sitting with closed eyes silently rocking the little girl. To the casual eye she looked passive and acquiescent enough; but her whole body and soul were one strung up tension of screaming protest. It was not until a tin railway car hit her on the side of the head that she got up and slapped both the boys again and reduced them once more to a sullen putting away of the toys.

Jerry lurched into the house, his hat over one eye, smelling of whiskey. He shambled into a seat by the stove, and she knew by the evil looks he cast at her that he was in an ugly drunk, a strange thing for him who was usually silly and good